In Greece, corruption trial opens for ex-defense minister

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Akis Tsochatzopoulos, former defense minister, arrived for his trial on money laundering charges in Athens.

By Niki Kitsantonis
New York Times
April 23, 2013

ATHENS — In the most high-profile criminal trial of a politician in Greece for more than two decades, a former defense minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, appeared in a court here Monday charged with setting up a complex money laundering network to cover the trail of millions of euros in bribes.

Tsochatzopoulos, 73, a onetime socialist heavyweight, is on trial with his wife, daughter, and 16 former aides and associates alleged to have participated in the scheme. He, his relatives, and another five suspects have been in custody at Athens’s high-security Korydallos Prison for the past year.

All but one of the 19 defendants pleaded not guilty. The former minister’s first cousin and onetime business partner and confidant, Nikos Zigras, pleaded guilty and apologized to the court, requesting ‘‘understanding and leniency.’’

Tsochatzopoulos once again denied the charges, which he said were ‘‘despicable,’’ and described the yearlong detention of himself and his relatives as ‘‘state violence.’’ The trial was adjourned and will continue May 8, after Greek Orthodox Easter.

Tsochatzopoulos and his wife, who were transferred to the courthouse Monday morning by a police bus, have been subjected to intense media scrutiny of their wealth as the living standards of ordinary Greeks plummeted after three years of austerity.

Dressed in a dark blue suit and clutching a file of documents, the white-haired former minister held his head high as police escorted him into the court building while his 50-year-old wife, a former assistant in his political office, appeared pale and drawn.

The charges are highly unusual in a country where top-ranking state officials are rarely prosecuted.

Tsochatzopoulos is accused of using a network of offshore companies during his time as defense minister between 1996 and 2001, and for several years after that, to siphon off millions of euros in bribes he is said to have taken in exchange for procurement contracts, including the purchase of a Russian missile defense system and German submarines.

According to prosecutors, Tsochatzopoulos received around 160 million euros, or about $210 million, in bribes for those two deals that were worth an estimated 3 billion euros. Authorities have traced 57 million euros.

The former minister, a founding member of the country’s once-dominant socialist party, Pasok, which is now part of a conservative-led coalition, has denied the charges. He is saying his prosecution is politically motivated.

He has called for members of the political and defense council that cosigned the contracts for the defense deals — including two former prime ministers, Costas Simitis and George Papandreou — to testify at his trial, which is expected to last several months.

The request has been rejected by the Greek judiciary, which said the bribery allegations, not the deals, were under scrutiny.

Irrespective of the outcome of his trial for money laundering, which could yield a 20-year prison term, Tsochatzopoulos will not escape jail time. Last month he was sentenced to eight years in prison for concealing assets from the authorities, notably by failing to report the purchase of a neoclassical mansion near the Acropolis. That property has been linked to the money laundering scheme that Tsochatzopoulos is alleged to have set up.

With public anger growing after the years of economic crisis, the government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has vowed to crack down on corruption among the political elite, whom most Greeks blame for the dysfunctional state system that created the country’s huge debt problem and led it to dependence on foreign rescue loans.

In an unusually severe sentence in February, a court in Salonika, Greece’s second-largest city, convicted the former mayor, Vassilis Papageorgopoulos, to life in prison for embezzling at least 18 million euros from city coffers.

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